Fistweaving 101 - Hit Boss -> Receive Healing

INTRODUCTION

This is a thread which is intended to inform, discuss, and document other things related to the fistweaving specific part of the Mistweaving specialization. There are reasons this deserves it's own thread and needs to be distinguished from the huge guide at the top, first and foremost because the guide is already saturated with a plethora of information regarding mistweaving. Secondly, the guide is rather outdated and uninformative regarding this topic. Thirdly, so I didn't make these pretty pictures for nothing.

RULES

The big one is don't ask something that's in the FAQ already, not only does it show you're not willing to browse this information and help yourself, it shows a large amount of disrespect to everyone involved helping you.

Second, specifically directed at people uninformed with the class. While the results here seem inflated, ridiculous, or darned right overpowered I'd implore you to Google the term "mutually exclusive" and consider what fully utilizing the damage component of mistweaving does to our actual healing.

Thirdly, don't start a circlejerk over how you think the class is under/over/super-powered or how you think fistweaving is worthless because you can't hit a boss through rampages. Fistweaving is as close to a support spec the game has right now, your role is not to focus on damage, it's to focus on saving lives and doing respectable damage in the process.

SUMMARY

It's not difficult to get the most out of fistweaving as a play style, it does however requires two things;

Self control, you need to be able to pull yourself away from doing damage to save lives.

A legendary meta gem, fistweaving is lackluster without one. You can blame poor implementation of muscle memory for this.

Regarding the former, I cannot stress enough that your job is first and foremost healing. Surging Mist and Chi Wave are two incredibly great tools for cluster healing melee and burst healing a specific player, if you don't use them you are doing a disservice to your raid.

STATS, GLYPHS, & GEAR

Spirit [to 5100] > Intellect > Crit > Haste

Spirit until 5100 which is the expertise and hit cap is worth 3 times as much as intellect point for point, and you should have enough of this passively on your gear regardless. Afterwards it's worth only half as much, which is something you should consider while soloing old content or facing a boss who needs to be attacked head on. Regardless, make sure you have enough hit/exp to hit the boss or you throw away mana on missing Jab and not expending Muscle Memory.

Intellect is self explanatory, 1 intellect = 1.21275 spellpower = 2.4255 attack power including buffs. Every attack you have will scale off intellect, as it provides attack power through Stance of the Wise Serpent. You will not benefit from agility in any form, you will also not benefit from any attack power buffs.

Crit is worth roughly 3/5 of a point of intellect, so for gems crit is the way to go. Fortunately this is pretty much the same as regular Mistweaving.

Haste is worth roughly half of what critical strike is. It's not completely worthless as it does increase the speed of auto attacks and the speed of CJL. It will also effect how many procs of the LMG you get, which is a large factor in longevity.

Glyphs are encounter by encounter basis, the most useful glyph is the Glyph of Mana Tea. It's quite probable you can get bad luck with the LMG, resulting in a need to use Mana Tea. Others which are quite useful are Glyph of Transcendance, Enduring Spheres, Spinning Crane Kick, and Touch of Death. Really nothing big except maybe Transcendence and Mana Tea.

Weapon
Regarding 2h vs. 1h, it's very simple. 2H of equal item level as a 1h will do roughly 10% more damage, however your actual heals lose quite a bit of intellect. It's definitely worth considering having BOTH, usually the phases you will need to do a lot of healing will be distinct from the ones which you want to do damage. The BiS weapon this tier is a 2/2 Suen-Wo.

Legendary Meta Gem
Capacitative is superior for damage, but complicates the rotation somewhat and has reduced effect in AoE situations. The Courageous version is a similar increase, allowing you to forego mana tea usage for the most part and it's also effective for when you need to actually heal. A 2H build with Capacitative is ~20% ahead of a 1H build with the Courageous however, which is quite a lot of damage.

Trinkets
You want the trinkets with the most passive intellect and good MP5 procs, HLG & Soothing are ideal. Trinkets like Rune of Re-Origination proc at severely handicapped rates for non agility specs so they really aren't useful at all. You have to keep in mind we do not benefit from Agility or attack power procs.

TALENTS

Talents are straightforward, basically you want to get Chi Wave, Ascension, and Xuen. Chi Wave is taken because it has a higher DPET than Tiger Palm, and it also serves to proc the legendary meta gem. Ascension because the MP5 from Muscle Memory goes through the roof with it talented, allowing the rotation to be certainly mana positive. Xuen because he will do 10% of your damage in single target situations, and almost a third of it with three target situations.

To emphasize on Xuen, with 3 targets, he does 80k DPS. 80k. DPS. That's 100k HPS. I'll let you think about that for a second.

PRIORITIES [ROTATION]

Get your statue down in a sensible place ALWAYS. DOUBLE HEALING IS WORTH A GLOBAL.

Mana Tea [<8% Mana]

Tiger Palm [W/ Muscle Memory & Without Tiger Power]

Blackout Kick [>1 Chi & Muscle Memory]

Tiger Palm [Muscle Memory & 1 Chi]

Invoke Xuen

Chi Wave

Jab

That's what will net you the most DPS, you can either forego the Blackout Kicks on pull or rely on support generated Chi to maintain Serpent's Zeal. I prefer the latter, I can hit well into the 300k mark with Blackout Kick on pull with a prepot. AoE is pretty simple, SCK -> SCK -> Blackout Kick while maintaining Tiger Power. If you have difficulty translating Tiger Power into a damage boost, it's roughly 10% or so extra damage done.

MISCELLANEOUS MECHANICS

For those of you who are interested in some random facts about how the class works, this stuff is mainly here so I don't need to keep it in my head.

Eminence benefits from Stance of the Wise Serpent Modifier. Xuen will do 120% of his damage as healing, other attacks will do 60% of their damage as healing. This includes Serpent's Zeal, and Serpent's Zeal does include Tiger Strikes. This means you can sometimes get a burst of 240k or so healing done from Tiger Strikes which is quite funny to see.

Expel Harm is "worth" casting when you're low on health, barely. Should probably be doing this anyway to help healing.

A fistweaving rotation will keep a tank alive through most boss damage, it is in fact slightly higher HPS than soothing & envm according to arison @ elitist jerks.

Statue placement can be a really enjoyable part of fistweaving, for example placing your statue 40 yards away on something like Dark Animus will reduce the overheal eminence does. This is because the statue and player passive will choose the same target in the same area.

Blackout Kick cleave doesn't stagger eminence, resulting in quite hilarious ~400k heals on one player if you can take advantage of it and get a full cleave.

Rushing Jade Wind is almost never worth using. It only does 60% of damage as healing, it should definitely allow SCK to trigger eminence for a short period of time solidifying it as a method of AoE eminence. Perhaps enable this and eminence on Xuen for WW as well, might solve their raid utility qq threads.

Serpent's Zeal does allow heal through the statue as well.

Eminence ticks do not double dip from crit, unfortunately.

CJL will consume mana on the start of the cast, but doesn't do damage. Incredibly annoying.

Is CJL better damage than Jab->TP?
-No, it also doesn't have the same flow. Meaning you either expend incredible amounts of mana, or waste time casting Renewing Mist to dump with uplift. Short term it's "better", long term you'll be mana starved with or without a legendary. You also lose vital mist procs, which is a large part of why it's justifiable to play this way.

Should I ever cast Renewing Mist?
-I haven't listed it in the priority que, but basically there's lots of opportunities to delve outside pure damage and provide extra healing. This includes times where the boss is invulnerable, out of range, shielded, or DPS has been called to a halt. So yes you should, but it's incredibly taxing to work it into your regular damage rotation.

What about Vital Mist?
-Any ability that is instant and generates chi should be used to slowly pool chi for expenditure on a full BoK cleave. This is quite incredibly as we can do 400k burst on adds for 5 seconds, which is insane for a healer.

I have low gear, what item level does this become worth it?
-You're probably looking at a full set of LFR gear at least, unfortunately the mana cost of fistweaving is prohibitive for many lowly geared fistweavers. You can still fistweave content such as heroic scenarios, just not progress.

Can you help me with my gear?
-Optimize your gear for mistweaving, if you're focusing on something for maximizing DPS while soloing you should really know what you're doing.

If I can't prepot agility, how do I do it?
-Use an intellect potion, it will grant you 10k attack power for the duration and give a significant boost to all your melee attacks.

-TRY TO NOT ASK QUESTIONS WHICH ARE ALREADY HERE, OR ONES SO SIMILAR THAT COMMON SENSE SHOULD BE ENOUGH-

Many addons can be helpful for Mistweaving, first and foremost you want something to track Serpent's Zeal, Vital Mist, Legendary Meta Gems, & Tiger Power. You will also benefit from a name plate addon to gauge when it's worth AoEing. Useful addons can be found below;

Weak Auras - Incredibly well made tracking addon, imagine inspector gadget holding a swiss army knife in one hand and a can of WD40 in the other while riding a dual sport, it still pales in comparison to how versatile this addon is.

Clique - Advanced mouseovers, allows you to for example use chi wave on your target with no mouseover, and chi wave on your mouseover when you are hovering over a guildy's raid frame. Incredibly useful for diversifying your output.

EavesDrop - Scrolling battle text with a twist, allows a very customizable interface which lends itself to gauging output as a fistweaver very well.

There are still quite a lot of nuances to get around to get accurate results with Simcraft. For example we need to emulate quite a lot of trinket procs, which is quite easy given I have them calculated in terms of MP5 here for you. You will also need to set your chi amount to either 3 or 4, depending on whether or not you have Ascension.

This is the default Mistweaving action priority list (apl from here onwards),

Alright, we've got the simulation sorted out easily enough. Now we need to import our character, this is easily done in Simc itself. Go to the import tab at the top;

Search for your character on the armory, and import. You'll get a huge wall of text like this (clicky);

Now we've already created our character specific apl, so we have no need for the default one so go ahead and splice the one you've made here over the suggested defaults. Remember to change the name of your gloves, especially if you're an engineer. After that's done, all that's left is for you to press simulate.

Don't you count the 5% stat and 5% int from gear? Doesn't matter too much since there are no longer any +spellpower gems/enchants at higher lvl, just on weapons which tend to have the same spellpower/ilvl.

Anyone ever notice how the sun seems to shine silverish now? Didn't it used to shine goldish? PM me if you've noticed this.

Thanks for taking the time to compile this information. However, I encourage you to consider changing your delivery in the Introduction and Rules sections. While I agree with you on the underlying points you are making, I think the tone is overly abrasive and detracts from the rest of the guide.

Based on how many fistweaving questions are asked (legit like 4-5 a week) and the fact that NO ONE actually takes the time to dig through all the fistweaving threads for answers, the rules are meant to detract people from doing just stat, stating that most of not all that needs to be known is right here. Unfortunately I doubt it'll decrease the number of fistweaving posts

That said, if you exclusively fistweave, do you think aiming for slightly more spirit is worth it? Especially in regards to if you ahve the meta or not. I know very few mw's exclusively fistweave but there are those in 10mans that do.

yeah CJL does do nice damage, and scales well with haste (as compared to normal FW) the problem is you cant get rid of the Chi that effectivly. The best way is probably to stop CJL at 3 Chi and cast Jab->BoK 3 times. That does still cost more mana than Jab+TPing though.

Little tip, concerning the LMG. try to use: Jab, TP, Jab, CJL, TP
A CJL that is cast during the procc, will be free of manacost for its entire duration!

Reworded quite a lot of the guide, intent was to draw attention to the points but it sounded quite obnoxious after waking up and reading over it. The thread is now family friendly!

---------- Post added 2013-06-04 at 12:25 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Luqyolo

That's fine, except only the actual 10% spellpower buff increases spellpower directly so if we want to be technically correct 1 int point = 1.1 SP point in a raid with the buff provided.

Will clarify this now.

---------- Post added 2013-06-04 at 12:32 PM ----------

I've also been working with the folks at simulationcraft to get fistweaving implemented, it's pretty much perfect right now apart from Blackout Kick not cleaving. I will post up the newest build's executable (those of you who know how to compile it independently are free to do so), all you'll need to do is place it in the simcraft directory.

Last edited by Luqyolo; 2013-06-04 at 11:31 AM.
Reason: Refrain from posting images that do not contribute to the thread lol

I also didn't realise 2h > 1h, last tier 1h > 2h, I was disappointed getting the HC staff from Ji-kun, but if it helps me do more DPS than I guess that's good.

I believe that was specifically for auto attack damage, which is still the case. 2H still slightly wins out because it increase the DPET for all your abilities. 2H starts to get incredibly good when you are bursting down adds.

---------- Post added 2013-06-04 at 12:46 PM ----------

Originally Posted by drdota

...or you could jab, tp and net some free mana

You still get two procs of MM into the duration of Lucidity with that, so it's actually more mana friendly. The problem is getting the CJL in can be tricky.

Nice one. One little question. In terms of DPS and DPS only, with 3 targets, is it really better to do 2x SCK + BoK...or Jab + some Chi filler like Expel Harm/Free Surging/Renewing Mist etc. + BoK. The second one should provide much more BoKs which is the main source of our AoE dmg, my concern is that 2x SCK takes so much time to "channel" so with 3 adds only, maybe it's simply not worth it. Thoughts?

Nice one. One little question. In terms of DPS and DPS only, with 3 targets, is it really better to do 2x SCK + BoK...or Jab + some Chi filler like Expel Harm/Free Surging/Renewing Mist etc. + BoK. The second one should provide much more BoKs which is the main source of our AoE dmg, my concern is that 2x SCK takes so much time to "channel" so with 3 adds only, maybe it's simply not worth it. Thoughts?

You should GCD clip SCK, by that I mean wait a second once you've cast it and use a /cancelaura to stop then start another immediately.

---------- Post added 2013-06-04 at 02:20 PM ----------

Added a summary of simcraft stuff for people who are interested, quite funny seeing results like 141k DPS being possible single target values at the end of this tier.

hideously worded lingering question regarding: ascension vs power strikes (assuming you have a shaman mana battery or whatever), assuming you can skip (some/all) mana tea via ascension, does it still come out ahead of power strikes for dps? ie 7 minute fight -> 420 seconds -> power strikes means 16 seconds or so to get 2 stacks of tea, so about 25 gcds for the gain of 21 chi meaning something like 4 less free surging mists but 21 more blackout kicks (replacing tiger palm) VS 4 "comparitively wasted" gcds (surging mist isn't dps), but representing a difference of 21 gcds freed up for more jab/tiger palm.. isn't the overall damage of the increase between 10(11) jabs and 10(11) tiger palms as opposed to being blackout kicks instead make it worth using power strikes provided you still have mana by the end of the fight?

Int also = some spell crit

Glyph of Surging Mist is nice in the regard that you don't need to change targets or use clique or mouseover macros, but meh otherwise

Do you go with a dubble set of gear? And switch depending on wich fight it is?

Right now I mostly fistweave the fights with renewing up and running on cd. I've got mostly haste gear because in the beginning of 5.2 i felt FW cost to much mana and now Soothing just makes me sit at full mana all the fight ( raiding 10 man). ( Armory ).